After the Pistons' loss to the Clippers Monday, Josh Smith called out his team for selfishness with the ball.

"We're still new to each other. It's not gonna happen overnight or in 40 games,” Josh Smith said after the Pistons' 112-103 loss to the Los Angeles Clippers Monday at The Palace.

“We have to figure out what we're doing right in the games that we're winning and try as much as possible to mimic those successful moments.”

Smith scored 24, and in the games where he's scored 20 points or more, the Pistons are 8-3. Brandon Jennings and Greg Monroe had off-games, and Smith believes the team should be more unselfish, seemingly a simple solution.

“We're very unselfish when we win,” Smith said. “Guys are helping each other out on defense, not caring if their man scores, just stopping the initial play. When we lose, it's the total opposite — the ball is sticking and too much individual plays besides playing together.”

via Josh Smith suggests Pistons share more, help each other out | The Detroit News.

Well, that's a pretty good sentiment. Let's see what some of the data says.

Let's start defensively. The most common play types that victimize "seflishness" are cuts, pick and rolls, and spot-ups. Those are scores usually created by a defender not helping when they should (rotating baseline to cut off the backdoor drive, not calling for help when getting caught in screens, and staying home instead of closing out on the spot-up shooter). Here are the ranks for the Pistons defensively in those sets from Synergy Sports:

Cuts: 22nd (8.4 percent of the time)

Pick and Roll passes to the roll man: 29th (6. percent of the time)

Spot-Ups: 14th (18.5 percent of the time, highest for what opponents attempt against them)

So there's some evidence that Smith's correct, but there's also the fact that they're rotating really well (seemingly at least) to the spot-up shooters. So there's some level of trust being used.